


What it Means to be a Fighter

by adorkable_laughter



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Doctor Will, Literature student Nico, M/M, Memory Loss, Sexual Content, Street fighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-04-14 05:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4551504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adorkable_laughter/pseuds/adorkable_laughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico di Angelo has always been the fighter of the two, not Will Solace. But when Nico loses all memory of Will, it's Will's turn to be the fighter. Will he go for the win?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bailci](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bailci/gifts).



> So, a while ago Bailci suggested this story and I was really inspired, but it took her birthday to actually make me write it out! Happy Birthday Bailci, you've been a great motivation for everyone in the solangelo universe :D

Will Solace realizes that within the 7 billion people condensed onto the Earth, only a select few understand the true pain of loss, the pain he’s feeling, that feels so real and so sudden.

It’s not exactly like the pain of losing someone to death. No, that just feels empty. It can take forever for death to hit someone for real, they can spend their whole life expecting their lost one to show up again, to re-appear.

They can imagine their mother standing at the stove when they smell home cooked turkey, wearing her frilly pink apron that says, “I always offer two dinner choices: take it or leave it” in bold black letters, that they'd given her for mother’s day when they were 14 and she’d laughed so hard she'd started snorting because it was _so_ her.

Or they can imagine getting a call from their brother at the start of summer because _again_ , he thought he broke the lawnmower when a rock got jammed in it, or because the pool was making funny spurting sounds that kept him up all night.

Or they can imagine their wife frantically running into the house yelling that she’d messed up their car because it kept dinging after she’d borrowed it to drive to the corner store for milk. She burrowed it because her car was at the garage, and the problem ends up being the speed control was set to 30 km/hr because she accidentally bumped the button when she adjusted the mirror.

The pain of losing someone to death is missing the simplest, silliest things when you realise you’ll never experience them again. But it’s also knowing that if they were here, they’d be doing those things. Which is comforting, in a way.

It’s a completely different kind of pain when they’re still here, right beside you, but they’re gone. When they’re beside you but no longer doing those things. When they no longer look in your eyes the same way and you just know. You know you’ve truly lost them, and not because they’re gone. You haven’t lost their body, the skin that coats them, you’ve lost _them_. Their inside, their personality, the parts you loved.

People just can’t seem to understand that, and it’s getting on Will’s nerves.

And the same applies for most other emotions. All these faces, all these bodies that hold such sincere expressions of emotions, are just robots doing as they’ve been programed to:

_Be sad when someone dies and anxious when a baby cries._

_Be scared in the face of fear and sad at the sight of tears._

_Happy at the sound of laughter and discouraged when you can’t find the answer._

_Guilty when someone’s holding something against you and relieved when someone says phew._

_Proud when you succeed and worried when you bleed._

The list goes on...

Be needy for something that everyone else has.

Well, that’s not _need_. That’s jealousy, that’s desire to fit in, that’s want. Not need. Not the kind of need that’s so powerful, each and every one of your organs is willing to dive right out of your body and chase after it like a dog fetching a bone.

Not the kind of need to attain something that’s unattainable but you absolutely cannot live without, the kind that tears into your chest and your stomach, and makes you feel so hungry it hurts, even if you’d just eaten a five course meal. Because you’ve got plenty of food, and a huge house full of everything anyone could possibly need to survive, but that's not what you’re hungry for. None of that can sooth you to sleep or smile at you in the morning. None of that can assure you that there is someone alive, standing next to you, ready to pick you up when you fall.

None of that can replace what Will needs.

And no one seems to understand that. They just kept showering him with useless replacements. It’s as if they’re trying to replace a perfect screw with a bent one. And they can’t quite understand why the bent one won’t fit into the hole properly. They’re so naive.

No one understands Will’s need in that moment.

His need to backtrack his footsteps on the squeaky hospital tiles. One foot, one glossy gray tile, the next foot, the next tile, and on and on and on until his back bangs into the rigid glass door, until the fresh outdoor air and the smell of vehicle exhaust envelops him as the heavy door beeps shut. Until he can no longer see the towering beige building that means death and suffering and a million rooms drowned in tears.

No one understands.

It’s driving Will crazy. Every inch of his body is twitching, begging for the impossible. Begging to go back.

To go back anywhere, anytime. Anytime before his best friend, his helper, his lover, his freaking life jacket if he were to be floating at sea without a clue of how to swim, his _everything_ , looked at him like he was a stranger.

His mind is begging him at least to forget, anything but feel the pain. Anything but have the evidence stare him straight in the eyes, innocent and unknowing.

To go back anytime before the words pierced his ears like sharp arrows that flew straight for his heart.

“Doctor Solace?” the voice asked, cutting through Will’s rant about being less reckless when he entered the small chalky room.

Will was shocked. He didn’t understand either, at first.

And maybe that's why he didn't correct him. Because Will’s a human being, who is slowly being introduced to real emotions, the ones that he’d been taught but never really understood.

Because he’s selfish, or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe not saying a word was selfless, because it won’t burden this individual standing in front of him, who looks just like someone Will used to know.

Because he’s angry. Angry at this shell for hiding the only thing Will needs. Angry that this fragile being could trap something so effortlessly, so ignorantly.

Because he’s afraid, and insecure. Afraid that this thing won’t revert back to it’s original form, afraid that it won’t want to. Afraid it shouldn’t because of all the pain it had experienced in that form. Afraid it won’t find Will worthy enough to go back for.

Because he’s stupid and ignorant and just as reckless as he’d been lecturing this person for being.

So when Will converted from Nico-Mode to Patient-Mode, the process of play pretend had officially begun. The process of true pain had begun.

“Yes, I’m doctor Solace and I will be overseeing your care for the next couple of days. Feel free to settle down in your bed and relax, most of your brain damage has healed while you were in a coma for the past month.”

The boy looked at him warily before lying down. “Um… can I have a glass of water?” he asked after a moment.

“Sure thing, I’ll get that straight away,” Will replied, smiling. (It felt fake. It was.)

It wasn’t Will who returned with a glass of water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know this was short but I wanted to get chapter 1 out today, so...
> 
> Updates will probably be slow because I'm working on two other stories and starting college in two weeks :D
> 
> Hope you liked it! If so, I'd love to know ;)
> 
> Have a wonderful day/night xD


	2. Chapter 2

Will spends the rest of his work day in a bathroom stall, trying to force himself to cry.

Tears are weird like that; they never come at the right moments. They have a mind of their own.

He just wants to feel something, not this foreign numbness. It's not the same as the numbness that comes from being outside in the cold for too long, but it's as if all of his emotions were put on pause, and he can’t press play.

It’s a shocking numbness, sharp; his universe is shrinking in on him, and the pain is so suffocating and severe it isn't even there. It’s like touching something so cold it feels hot.

That night isn’t much better. He walked home on autopilot and immediately went to his bedroom, face planting into the baby blue covers of his bed.

He reaches over to his bedside table to grab his mini stereo and plugs in his IPod, putting his music on shuffle and turning it up as loud as it’ll go.

It’s not loud enough. He needs to drown in the music. He needs it to block out his noisy, painful, _blaring_ thoughts.

He lets out an emotionless laugh that dies in the covers when The Stones' "Paint it Black" is the first song to play.

_I look inside myself and see my heart is black_

_I see my red door I must have it painted black_

_Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts_

_It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black_

The contrast, the contrast is killing him. The baby blue comforter is blinding, but when he closes his eyes, the darkness is snarling viciously at him.

He presses pause when he can’t take it anymore, then clicks on his 'happy songs' playlist.

It’s supposed to help, doing happy things when feeling sad. It’s supposed to trick the mind, just like pretending to be superman before an exam gives a false sense of confidence and results in better grades than doing the test as a nervous wreck. Just as actors do little things that characterize their characters before showtime to help them convince themselves that they _are_ the characters.

"Beautiful Day" by U2 starts playing and he sighs contently, comforted by the familiarity of the rhythm. The song starts slowly.

He closes his eyes and grabs onto every word like it'll pull him out of this dark and lonely cave.

_It’s a beautiful day_

_Sky falls, you feel like_

_It’s a beautiful day_

_Don’t let it get away_

It doesn’t feel like a fucking beautiful day to him.

He clenches the covers, the beautiful sky blue covers that shouldn’t be allowed to exist at that moment.

Priming your mind: a memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences how you react to another.

_It is statistically proven to work._

_Will has studied this stuff for years._

_And it is_ supposed _to work._

It's what he breathes, what he lives by. But suddenly he feels tears streaming down his cheeks, pouring down like rain, and they won’t stop.

He can't see anything. Nothing is clear anymore. The sun isn't shining, the sky isn't blue, not in _his world._

The sky is hidden, covered in dark gray clouds, and it’s crying raindrops. Crying, and crying, and crying. And he’s swimming in them.

Swimming and swimming, lost at sea.

And then he’s sleeping, raindrops still batting down on his skin.

~~~

He wakes up to a face sticky with dried up tears, a throbbing throat, and Lou Ellen’s angry voice ringing in his ears.

At first he thinks it’s a receding dream, a shadow of the life he'd been living in his sleep, but then he rubs his eyes and the world becomes less foggy, and the voice is just getting louder, clearer, sharper.

And _angrier._

“William Solace, get your ass out bed right now!” She’s banging on his door and for a second he worries that she’s punched a hole right through it. “Let me in right now, and get me a fucking towel, Will!”

Another bang, followed by a wince and _many_ curses. “My hand is bleeding, my throat is killing, and I’m _so_ pissed.”

Will jumps out of bed, heading for the door.

He opens it to see Lou crouched down, her face in her hands.

“Lou?”

She looks up, jumps up, and then Will can’t breathe as she tackles him into the most bone-crushing hug ever.

“Lou!” he exclaims.

“ _Will_ ,” she responds. “You're okay.”

“Not for long if you don't let me go!”

She squeezes him tightly once more before releasing him. He stumbles backwards.

Lou’s scrutinizing him, her eyes squinting as they travel from head to toe, and he’s embarrassed, ashamed, a mess. He feels like death. He looks like death.

She places a hand on her hip. “Care to explain why you dropped dead all of the sudden?” She goes to plop down on his old couch. “We were supposed to go bowling last night with Cecil and you never showed. And you’re not answering your phone.”

Will looks down, and his eyes catch on her right hand, bleeding slightly on the knuckles from whacking his door maniacally.

He spins around, hurrying away saying, “I'm getting you a damp cloth for that.”

In the kitchen he quickly splashes water on his face, ice cold water. Then he slowly gets out a white face-cloth and wets it, dragging out his movements to avoid having to go back out to face Lou.

Eventually the kitchen door opens behind him and Lou pulls herself up to sit on the counter beside where he’s standing. He hands her the cloth. 

She takes it, and pokes his cheek.

He turns his head away from her.

She twirls a blonde strand of his hair around her finger and tugs lightly before letting it curl back into its natural wavy state.

He ducks further away so she can’t reach his head.

She _whines_.

He mumbles a ‘humph.’ (It sounds like, _too bad, I’m not relenting_.)

She turns on the tap. Will thinks _she’s_ relenting, that she’s re-wetting her cloth in defeat.

But then there’s water entering his peripheral vision and he turns to see an empty cup held mid-air in her hand before his face is soaked.

She giggles.

Water drips down his face and he finally turns to look at her directly, and usually at this point he would burst out laughing, maybe topple onto her and get her shirt soaked as revenge. But there’s still a bit of blood dripping down her knuckles, and the cup is clanging on the quartz countertop, and suddenly, overwhelmingly, he has this feeling that everything is breaking. 

And then he breaks, too.

The tears come quickly, unlike last night. It doesn’t feel like he’s forcing them. Instead, they’re forcing him.

Lou grabs for him, pulling him to her, and he lets himself fall.

His face lands in her lap, and she wraps her arms around him. Will pushes himself harder into her legs, wanting to get lost in the scratchy fabric of her purple jeans. She squeezes him tighter as if she knows. 

He heaves, in and out, rubbing his face back and forth in her lap, and it almost makes him feel like this is just a regular lazy Sunday afternoon with him lying his head in Lou’s lap on his couch while they have a Harry Potter marathon. (They've had so many they don’t even have to watch to know what's happening anymore. Sometimes Lou pauses and mimics Harry, she doesn't like him much.)

He can almost convince himself he’s sleepy and Harry’s off trying to kill himself on the screen in front of them.

Almost.

Soon it starts feeling less like sleepy Sundays and best-friend-cuddles, and more wet and gross, and like heartbreak.

(It starts smelling different, too. Of salty tears and a broken child.)

He lifts his head, looking at the hummingbird that explodes into shards of color on her shirt.

“Nico’s gone,” he whispers.

She’s silent.

(Lou is rarely silent, and this pierces Will in the heart all over again.)

“Gone...” she repeats, like it’s a forbidden word. “Nico.”  Her head is drooping down towards Will’s. “No, no.”

Will shakes his head in her lap. “He’s alive, but he’s gone Lou, he’s _gone.”_

She grabs his head and pulls him to look up. “I don’t get it.”

“He woke up.”

“But, that's great!” She says it as if she’s trying to win a fight, hoping to. (For the both of them.)

“This fight was bad, Lou.”

“He's been getting into bad fights his whole life." She’s desperate. "And you’re a good doctor.”

“This is nothing I can heal.”

“Spill it, Will.” Her voice isn’t allowed to be so delicate. (This is Lou, scared.)

“He doesn’t remember me.”

~~~

Nico doesn’t remember Lou, either. Or Cecil, or anyone he’d met after High School, according to Jason, who’d been at the hospital the whole time. Apparently Percy is hanging off the replacement doctor's heals, demanding to know more, demanding that he fix this.

They think Will should come and visit, maybe try to trigger something, but Will doesn’t think he can. It’s been a week, now.

The whole gang visits him that afternoon: Percy, Annabeth, Jason, Piper, Leo, Hazel, Frank, Reyna. All of Nico’s friends from High School. Reyna’s the only one Nico didn’t go to High School with.

Hazel immediately crushes him in a hug, weeping.

She’s at least two heads shorter than him, and her wild hazelnut curls tickle Will’s neck.

(Her crying sounds delicate. It feels like looking at stained glass, fragile and easy to shatter. It feels like shards of glass piercing Will’s heart all over again.)

He hugs her and cries with her.

He hates himself. A week has passed and he hasn’t even thought of Hazel, Nico’s half sister.

Will lost five years of time with Nico.

They all lost six.

(But they didn’t lose _all_.)

Hazel did lose almost all of her years with Nico. She only met Nico a year before they graduated High School.

When Will asked Nico about Hazel after he met her, Nico said, “You know my father’s an idiot, right?”

His father seemed distant, Will knew. “Well, he does seem a little closed off.”

“Yeah, he’s closed off, but idiotically so.”

Will waved his hand at Nico to continue after that. Nico smirked then, like he knew how much his choppy explanations annoyed Will.

“He left Hazel’s mom, Marie Levesque, a month after he impregnated her with Hazel. He met my mother, Maria, not long after. For all we know he could’ve been having an affair with her long before. She got pregnant with me, and I was born a few months after Hazel, but neither of us knew the other existed.”

Will found himself unable to comprehend that, he still can’t. Especially not when he looks around him at all of the friends he’s made through Nico, lounging around his apartment, who he can’t imagine leaving behind.

(Especially not when he looks around him and Nico isn’t there. How could someone ever leave anyone behind if it feels like this when they’re gone?)

Nico continued his story after Will was silent for awhile. “She came to live with us right before my last year of High school. Her mother had died and she had nowhere else to go. This was a year after Percy and the gang graduated, so it didn’t take long for me to warm up to her, I was always alone at school anyway. She’d make my lunch and leave these adorable notes in my lunch box. It doesn’t take much to love Hazel. She also met Frank in High School.”

(Nico told him all of these stories, he can’t help but remember. Nico would never tell him stories like these again.)

Jason and Piper tell him that Nico has been slipping in and out of consciousness all week, which is natural, Will knows. (It still hurts.)

Will wonders how they’re all so strong, they’d known Nico since High School.

Nico told him he couldn’t make any friends when he started High School, and that was why he ended up “stuck with this pile of idiots weighing him down.” They’d been Bianca’s friends, and after she died in Nico’s second year of High School, they hung by his side.

Nico shook his head, baffled, when he told that to Will.

Percy also tells him Nico can’t stand up on his own without vomiting, and he has constant dizzy spells. It almost seems to get worse by the day, he says.

Will stops them all from telling him more. He knows the symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

He knows Nico won’t just get better.

He knows going to see him will make no difference. It’ll just make Nico so confused he loses consciousness.

Besides, he never wants to hear the indifferent tone in Nico’s voice directed at him ever again. He never wants to see those cold eyes. Now, Nico’s eyes look like black holes; they’re erasing all of the other looks he’d given Will over the years.

They were cold like that towards Will years ago. (Distant and detached.)

But first they were lifeless, when Will found him on the sidewalk that night five years ago. They were the first thing Will saw when he was walking towards Nico that night.

It was dark out and Will had ended work a bit later than usual.

After his dull, dark eyes, Will noticed the blood, and then he couldn’t stop noticing it. It was _everywhere._

It started on his forehead, dripping down. And then his lips had deep gashes.

His shirt was torn at the shoulder, but all Will could see was red underneath.

Will stopped, blinked.

Then Nico swayed to the right, and his eyes were fluttering shut, then trying to pull themselves open again.

He wore a black hoodie, and in the dark he could almost pass for a drunken homeless wandering the streets. There were a lot of those in downtown New York.

Will would’ve shrugged past one of them with his head down, hoping they didn’t decide he was easy prey.

(Not that they’re predators, the homeless, but they have rough days. They all find their own way to cope. Will’s extremely saddened by it.)

Nico was walking like a drunkard, and he looked wrecked like he didn’t have anywhere to return to, but there was blood, too much blood, and Will would never turn his head away from someone injured.

Suddenly, Nico had fallen sharply towards the street.

Will’s feet felt heavy in that moment, and his mind wild.

It was the blinding white lights of a truck that lumbered towards them and the monstrous honking that got Will moving.

He dashed the few meters that separated them, and yanked Nico out of the road by his arm, wincing as he saw the blood up close. It was bad.

Will had brought him to the hospital where he was doing an internship over the summer. He was just starting as a pre-med, and he helped care for Nico for the entire two weeks it took to heal him. Nico’s whole body was bruised and bloody, his shoulder was dislocated, and someone had taken a knife to his stomach. If not for the car, he still would have died from blood loss if Will hadn’t found him.

Later, Nico had explained more.

“It was a street fight,” he said, lightly. “At The Pankration.”

_The Pankration._

“The Pankration as in the bar?” Will asked.

Nico nodded.

Will continued his check-up, saying, “What were you doing _there?”_

Nico looked panicked, then. This was a few months after he recovered, during one of his follow up appointments, his last one.

“I go there,” Nico whispered. “A lot.”

Will was shinning a light in Nico’s eyes, making sure that everything was alright. (Everything was alright, everything was more that alright. Except everything wasn’t alright, because everything being alright meant that this would be Nico’s last appointment.)

Nico’s eyes were serious.

“You’re not pulling my leg,” Will said. “Why do you go there?”

There are rumours about The Pankration, it has a reputation.

“To fight. To win.”

Street fights were common around bars, where people are drunk and stupid, and decide to take it outside. But this bar, The Pankration, it’s known for the fights. It’s like one of those low-key places crowded with underage teenagers because they don’t card at the door, except its filled with angry men looking for a fight. It's illegal, apparently, because they bet on the fights.

“But-”

“Will,” Nico says. (That sure shut him up, Nico tended to be more formal and professional, at the time. Will _was_ Nico’s doctor, after all.) “It’s not usually that bad, except when I just started going.”

Nico looked at him, like he was letting Will soak it in. “Um. Okay.” Will looked to the ceiling. “Yeah.”

Nico continued, “Now I always win when I fight. I practiced every night until I passed out. It was the only way I could fall asleep.”

Nico stopped. Will thought he regretted saying so much, but then he looked back into Will’s eyes. (He had this expression that Will didn’t quite understand yet. He wanted to understand it so badly.)

Why was Nico telling him this?

“How did you get hurt, then?” Will asked.

“There was a new person that night. He was angry, and strong. Reyna wasn’t there. Reyna’s a friend I made at the fights. She was always there, in the side lines. She never fights, unless she sees someone being pulled into a hopeless fight, then she interferes. She volunteers and kicks the guy’s ass, she’s such a warrior. She saved me once when I was still new to all of it.”

Nico’s eyebrows were furrowed.

“So I was alone. Percy and Jason weren’t there either, my High School friends. They found out about the fights and had to carry me home a few times, until they met Reyna and decided I was ‘safe’.”

Nico’s tiny smile was adorable. He was looking at Will. Will smiled and nodded, as if encouraging him to continue.

As Nico told his story, Will became more and more certain. He was going to fall in love. And he'd only known him for months.

“I lost bad. I think he would’ve killed me, but I ran.”

Will hugged him, then. Nico pushed him off, shocked, and squinted at him suspiciously.

Will thanked him for sharing, and then Nico admitted that it did feel nice to talk to someone about it.

Will gave him his number, like it was nothing. (It wasn’t nothing.)

“We should talk again sometime,” he said to Nico before he left for the last time. “I think it could do us both some good.”

(Will couldn’t lose him. Not yet.)

(Not ever.)

Nico nodded, staring at him strangely, and left.

A week later he received these texts:

_Where should we meet?_

_Oh, uh, it’s Nico_

_Hi._

That was how it begun. His eyes started weary and uncertain. And then they became accepting and thankful. And then slowly Will discovered all sorts of other expressions in those two chocolate brown eyes.

Happiness, laughter.

Sadness, tears.

Love. Desire. Lust.

He doesn’t want to lose those.

He can’t stand to lose those.

But they’re gone, and for what?

For Nico’s stupid bar fights.

Because Nico couldn’t get over his dead sister, and Will wasn’t enough to fill the gap. (Will cringes as soon as he thinks that. It's a cruel thing to think.)

Bianca was his sister. She died when he was thirteen, and that was when he adopted this _hobby_ of his.

“Bianca loved quests,” Nico told him, about two years after they met. “Percy was your age, two years older than me, and Bianca too. They were close, they kind of acted like long lost twins. They were both devious and adventurous. They’d go on these “quests” and at first it was just building pillow forts in our basement, closing the lights and sneaking around, letting their imagination do the rest.”

Nico laughed lightly, but frowned again soon. “As they got older, the quests got more dangerous, more real.”

He sighed, and rested his head on Will’s shoulder, looking at the pale yellow wall of Will’s apartment in front of them. (Will had never thought one day Nico would move into that apartment with him. Then when he did, Will never thought he would leave.)

“A week after she died, Percy told me what happened. I was twelve, turning thirteen in a few days, and they were fifteen, when it happened. It was her idea, she wanted to get me the best birthday present ever.”

Will let him speak, slowly combing his fingers through Nico’s soft hair.

Nico hummed in appreciation, then continued.

“I was really into this game called Mythomagic.”

Nico blushed at that. Will laughed, nuzzling his cheek.

“You dork,” he said into Nico’s pink cheek.

“You _geek_ ,” Nico shot back, the hint of laughter in his voice.

Will knocked Nico’s head lightly with his own, saying, “Continue your story.”

“Pushy,” Nico said, and smiled. Will felt it under his face. “Alright, alright, I’ll continue, _blondie.”_

Will nibbled on Nico's cheek.

“Anyway," Nico said, pushing Will off his face. "Bianca was off plotting and being to too-good sister she was." His tone was already duller. “Percy hoped on board with her plan immediately. She knew my favorite myhtomagic figure was Hades, which also happened to be the rarest. I could never find it anywhere, but she found it. A mad collector who just happened to live in New York had one. And he was such a bully.

“Bianca found him online, in the fanbase, tearing other collectors apart and swimming in his ridiculously large ego. I don’t think she would’ve done it if he was a good guy, but he wasn’t, so she planned to rob it from him.”

Will held Nico, transfixed by the story. (And in love with the feel of Nico relaxing in his arms.)

“It turned out this guy had a serious security system on his place, he was a complete wack. After they got it, they ran, and the whole house seemed to be having some sort of spastic attack, as Percy described it.” Nico sighed, he wrapped his arms around Will. “They were running and scared and Bianca was behind Percy. They were dressed dark, it was dark. There was a car speeding…”

Nico had spent the night after that. They spent the entire time cuddling on Will’s couch.

Will sort of just accepted his fights after that, or just pretended that he did. For Nico, but mostly for himself. Nico did make money from them, he rarely ever lost, and people always placed bets. And the fights seemed to comfort him in some strange, twisted way.

Will should’ve fought harder. He should’ve persisted more. He should’ve stopped him.

He thought he did. He thought Nico was done with the fights. He didn’t think Nico had gone to a fight since Nico started university 3 years ago.

He should’ve cared more, and noticed.

It’s too late, and he’s stuck in bed, hurting, regretting.

All he can do now is close his eyes and remember. Play pretend.

He throws his pillow, whips it at the wall, because one day he won’t even remember.

A picture frame falls. It’s a picture of Nico and him, last year, after Nico moved into this apartment with him. They were on the couch, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, taking silly selfies.

Will cries, and he cries, and he cries.

He feels like he dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’ve been reborn.  
> I feel like everything has changed, my writing included, so it’s probably VERY different than the first chapter, which I spent 6 months of my life regretting. Sorry, sorry, sorry. 6 months? I’m terrible.  
> (Also I wrote the first quarter of this chapter then, and just could not figure out how to change it. Sorry if it sucks.)  
> I was so unmotivated, and then I decided to just rebuild the idea of this universe in my mind, and I hope you like it! (I do.)  
> As I was away, I learnt a lot of things.  
> (Including the power of brackets.)  
> And that I’m a super sporadic person who can’t commit to anything and leaves countless things unfinished. I also have these random, overwhelming bursts of inspiration, and go crazy with them, but they never last long enough.  
> I also learned that all of that cannot be helped, so I’m going with it.  
> Good news: I have the next 3 chapters pretty much all written so I can post those soon!  
> Now I know I’ve written too much already. (This is supposed to be a note, not a story, darn it!) But the last thing I have to say, and perhaps the most important, is thank you.  
> Thank you.  
> I hope I hear back from you as either a comment of a kudo, that would be wonderful!  
> If not, come pay me a visit on tumblr at adorkable--laughter. (Still waiting for the day someone tells me the secret to putting links.)  
> I love you all.


	3. Chapter 3

A month has passed.

Will has to start going back to work. He used up all of his sick days and all of his vacation days for the entire year.

He’s still pretty new at the hospital, he can’t just _not go_ for that long. (Though he wouldn’t have gone at all, if Lou didn’t drag him out of the house.)

“I spent almost 10 years of my life listening to you ramble outrageous names for parts of the human body,” Lou said. “Those years are not going to get thrown in the trash.”

Will is stubborn, but Lou was definitely a hypnotist or something in a past life. Somehow she never loses.

Will finds himself back on his old routine, setting his alarm for 6:00 AM and regretting his career choice until he has a cup of coffee.

Nico is back at his father’s house. Jason talked to Will about where Nico should go. It would be strange to send him to Will’s apartment, a stranger’s apartment. ( _Stranger._ What a harsh word, sharp, and quick to slice through his heart.)

“You don’t have to be a stranger to him, Will,” Jason said. “You don’t have to lose him yet.”

Will just shook his head, and told him to make sure Nico got well settled into his father’s place. (Will never knew his father, Hades, well. He dresses like a business man on the outside and is a business man all the way through to his heart, and always has a phone between his shoulder and ear as he floats around. They’d had dinner together, the three of them, a few times. He seemed distracted the whole time, never _really_ looking at Will.)

Percy and Annabeth come over to visit his apartment more frequently now. They’re married.

They stopped telling him outright that he should go visit Nico. Everyone is tired of asking him, he never even answers that he might. He even stopped telling them no, and he simply shakes his head slightly or stays silent, like he didn’t hear them say anything.

They still drop hints.

“I read something online once,” Annabeth says. “There isn’t an actual cure for amnesia, and it’s rare that anyone has severe memory loss of more than a few years, but there’s been some shocking and famous recoveries from memory loss caused by traumatic brain injuries. And there are therapies, like occupational therapy-”

“You think I don’t know this?” Will yells. He feels as if he’s caught in a net all of the sudden, trapped and suffocating, and angry. He stands up abruptly.

They’re yelling his name, apologising, and promising not to push him anymore. But his legs are already pulling him away.

~~~

It’s dark out, and Will can barely tell the streets apart anymore.

This, he recognises as soon as he turns the corner. He’s on the edge of the city. There aren’t any houses around here. Only a gas station and a convenience store and a bunch of abandoned buildings. And…

The Pankration.

The garbage littering the concrete is being carried around by wind, the windows are cracked, the crows are cawing and the seagulls are screeching. It’s unmistakable, and Will wonders what led him here.

He keeps walking, his feet feel tugged forward, as if the floor is moving beneath them.

Perhaps that’s how Nico felt whenever he came; tugged into a trap.

(Still, his thoughts drift to Nico. Still, he pretends they don’t. It leaves him empty, hallow.)

He’s been to this area before. He forced Nico to bring him along one night a few years ago. Nico made him stay hidden outside, but he managed a few peaks through one of the broken windows, and that was enough for him.

After that he wouldn’t stop bothering Nico about it for days, practically begging him to stop going.

Nico kept going. Then, when he moved in with Will, his cuts and bruised slowly healed completely and didn't get covered in fresh ones.

Will doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

He hears a shout from inside the building, it sounds like victory. Will panics.

He finds himself looking through the same window he’s looked through for years as he desperately tried to spot Nico. Nico always watched the window, in case he showed. He’d leave with Will when he spotted him, knowing Will was worried.

Will can’t see much now, it’s dark and late at night. It must be past midnight.

Somehow he ends up inside, and as soon as he does, he realises. Nico could be here. It makes him angry that that scares him even more than the fact that he’s in The Pankration, a bar known for the fighting.

(Will’s emotions make him angry a lot these days. His emotions aren’t fair, or clean cut. They’re jagged and incomprehensible, and make Will want to pull them out of his chest and put them through the shredder.)

If Nico’s here, he might break down.

Nico isn’t here, however.

There are people, a gang of about 30.

Will tries to hide in the shadows, but he’s a newbie, and Nico always said that the fighters are hungry for newbies.

(Hungry for fresh flesh to tear apart. It’s sickening, why most of them fight.)

One of them spots him quickly, calling out to him like he’s a stripper preparing to put on a show.

After that it doesn’t take long for him to be surrounded, trapped in a circle of hungry men and facing the hungriest of them all.

( _I’m a man, too,_ he thinks. But these men are an entirely new race of men. They seem so far, to Will.)

It’s all really quick, even though the pain feels slow.

(So slow it’s almost seductive.)

_Hit me,_ he thinks. _Make me bleed._

(Bleed out all the pain. Bleed out all the memories.)

They do, they hit him. Again and again.

They whisper things in his ear, or maybe they yell it but Will's in too much pain to hear. "Not gonna fight back?" they say. "You wanna _bleed_?"

Soon he loses count of the punches. Then he loses sight of the man punching.

Then he forgets how to count, there’s too much pain.

He barely registers it when arms wrap around his waist and drag him away, leaving the man who’d been hitting him lying on the ground.

His eyes flutter shut before he can see that most of them aren’t surprised by his savior.

When he wakes up he can’t get the images out of his mind, and the smell seems to follow him, like a dog needy for attention.

( _Why did Nico enjoy these fights?_ he wonders.

Nico won, he always won. He was like a king there, proving all those men were useless.)

Will can’t seem to open his eyes, and he doesn’t know where he is. It feels like he’s on a couch.

When he tries to lift his head, it throbs, it protests. He can’t do it.

Someone eventually puts a pillow under his head, but he can’t thank them, his mouth seems to have stopped functioning, too.

~~~

It’s Reyna, Will realises, eventually.

It took a few hours for Will to orient himself.

At one point Reyna took a wet cloth and cleaned up his face. (It felt more like his face was being scratched by sandpaper.)

He can’t talk very well, she tells him he was punched badly in the throat and it’s swollen.

“I didn’t know it was you when I stopped the guy and pulled you away,” she says. “You look terrible, Will. I can’t believe it. I didn’t have to be there, and what if I hadn’t arrived?”

She sighs, Will still can’t speak. “You’re an idiot.”

She finishes cleaning him up, but he still feels like crap. He knows he looks like crap, too.

“Those guys are bigger idiots,” she adds. “There aren’t always people around to stop them, you know. I hate to think of what happens when I’m not there. I don’t even know what kind of insane drug you took at the hospital to get yourself in that situation, Will. A fucking bar fight, Will?”

Will cringes. It hurts to cringe. She tells him he’ll feel better in a few days.

Will thinks Reyna’s amazing. She came to visit Nico sometimes, and they seemed to really understand each other, like siblings. She almost acts like Nico’s mother. Nico pretended to hate it, but both Will and Reyna know he loved it.

“Reyna’s amazing,” Nico told him, once. “After she saved me that time when I was thirteen, she always sort of hovered around me. When I looked towards her, she would squint at me like I was stupid to come back. I was, I guess. After we became friends, she told me that she used to be like the bad guys. She didn’t say much, I understood. I told her about Bianca, then.”

Will got it after that. Reyna’s not a god, she’s just patching herself up, patching up her past.

He stays on her couch for two days, and his body slowly starts _functioning_ again. He isn’t looking or feeling better, however.

Piper comes to get him and brings him home.

Her, Annabeth, and Reyna got close last year. Reyna started coming over along with the whole gang, and they just clicked. It was pretty awesome, actually. With the three of them together, someone would have to have a death wish to make one of them angry.

Out of the three, Piper is definitely the most upset about Will’s beat up body.

Lou and Cecil are at his apartment waiting for him. They stay the night and distract him from everything.

(He doesn’t deserve such good friends.)

~~~

After Will’s bar fighting incident, Piper convinces him to have weekly psychology appointments with her.

Piper’s a psychologist, and a good one.

“We’ll do it at me and Jason’s place,” she says. “You need a change of scenery.”

Her and Jason have been dating since High School.                                                                                         

Their place is nearby, and Will agrees to go on Friday nights, when they both don’t have to worry about going to work the next day.

Will was very silent the first time, scared of the moment she’d bring up Nico. She didn’t.

She still hasn’t, except to fill him in on Nico’s life a bit, and it’s been a month.

Will asks her about it: “Weren’t these therapy sessions supposed to be about Nico?”

She smiles. “They’re about you, Will.”

“But-”

“You’re here because it’s become apparent that there’s something wrong, and if you don’t talk to someone you’ll just keep feeling worse.”

Will nods, he knows.

“I’m not going to take everything I think is a problem in your life and force it on you. I don’t think you’d come back if I did.”

Will sighs, relieved.

Piper continues after giving him a small smile. “I think you know what things are bugging you in your life, even if you refuse to think about them or admit them. If you don’t bring them up or elaborate on them when I mention them, then I don’t think you’re ready to talk about them.”

Will’s just staring at her, amazed again at her confidence and brilliance. She laughs.

“How was your week?” she asks.

“The usual. Work’s busy, but I don’t think about anything while I’m there. I can’t sleep more than a few hours a night.”

“Have you been working on the methods we discussed?”

“I tried the journal, but I was just too drained to write.”

“Okay, we’re going to plan a set routine for you today. Repetition and routine might put your mind more at ease. Also, doing the same things before going to bed every night can help you sleep. They’ll signal to your brain that it’s sleep time.”

Will relaxes into the fuzzy brown cushions of Piper’s sofa, trusting her.

(Even though the idea of any routine that doesn’t involve Nico sounds revolting.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, following a regular schedule!  
> The angst, the angst, the angst, it sure perseveres.  
> I always thought I was absolute crap at angst, but I'm feeling like it's a newfound ability. Don't worry, it won't last forever! I appreciate sad endings and stories that break my heart, but I don't have it in me to make these two unhappy.  
> I'd love to know what you think! Do you like my writing style? Are you feeling the angst? What do you think about the plot?  
> I love you guys, and thank you so much for all of your wonderful support!!!  
> (Also, please ignore how elusive that fight scene is, I know nothing of fighting.)


	4. Chapter 4

Half a year passed and Will can almost say he’s settled back into his normal routine.

(Lies. Lies are filling up his life. He can’t stop telling lies.)

All of Nico’s High School friends continue to visit, which isn’t strange. They became his friends as well over the five years he’d known Nico. They came to the apartment all the time when Nico lived here, so why would he think that would change?

(Nico’s gone. Everything’s supposed to change. Nothing can be normal.)

He looks around his bedroom.

(No longer _their_ bedroom.)

He’s lying in bed; it’s a Saturday.

(Saturdays used to be his favorite. They would both sleep in, together. Will rarely had to go in to the hospital on Saturday’s and if he got called in, it was at night. And Nico wasn’t at school - he was studying literature at university. Sometimes they’d sleep all morning. Sometimes Nico would get up and make him breakfast in bed. Sometimes they’d have lazy morning sex.)

(If he ever woke up before Nico on Saturdays, he would trail his fingers all over Nico’s body. And then trail his lips over the same paths. Nico would pretend to still be asleep, until he couldn’t take it. Then he'd pounce on Will and Will would shriek and laugh and laugh and laugh until it all turned into moans.)

Now, Saturday’s are reminiscent of the past. Now, he wishes to eliminate Saturdays from the week.

He sits up in bed, and thinks, suddenly, that the house shouldn’t look the same as it did when Nico was here.

He gets up, and first he drags away the little bedside table that’s on the side Nico used to sleep on. He drags it right into the large closet and tucks it underneath his hanging clothes.

(Half of the rack is empty now, it looks lonely. Percy and Jason came to get most of Nico’s stuff when they helped Nico move.)

Then he takes his large dresser and moves it to the opposite end of the room.

Next, he goes to tackle the bed away. It’s a high, double mattress bed.

(Nico used to complain that he was too short for it, he had to hop onto it. Sometimes he made a show of it, hopping onto the mattress and bouncing up and down like he was in a children’s inflatable playhouse. It was adorable, and Will couldn’t help but tackle him down onto it and eat him up afterwards.)

He goes to pull the mattress’ off so the bed will be light enough to be moved more than an inch, but as he pulls off the top mattress, a mini white paper flutters in the air.

It’s a note.

_Will,_

_Don’t be worried when you get home and I’m not here._

_(You will be worried, you always are. You just won’t say it.)_

_I’m sorry I’m making you worry._

_I’m sorry about all of the things I said to you last night._

_I’m sorry I made you say those awful things back to me._

_I’m sorry._

_I’m not going where you think I’m going, but it’s a secret. You’ll know soon enough._

_Love,_

_Nico._

He didn’t end up getting home to Nico’s note, he ended up getting home to a sleepless night of worry. He ended up with a phone call in the middle of the night.

He rushed to the hospital immediately after the call, as he always had when Nico got hurt after a fight. Which wasn’t that often after he’d moved in with Will.

He got there when the sun was just starting to rise.

(At the time, he didn’t know that would be the last time he’d ever _really_ see the sun rise.)

As usual, he took charge of Nico’s care as soon as he got there, and they had to put Nico in a coma for a bit more than a month. There was too much swelling in his brain that if he overused it (or used it at all), it could cause even worse damage. That was the routine for most patients with traumatic brain injury.

They treated Nico’s wounds while he was in the coma.

(At least the pain couldn’t overwhelm him that way.)

Will cried a lot, and camped out at the hospital when he wasn’t working.

He was so ready to give Nico a speech for being reckless when they took him out of the coma.

He always said those speeches lightly. (Inside, he wanted to yell and shake Nico back and forth until he promised to never go to those fucking fights ever again.)

He didn’t even get out the first sentence before he knew.

 _I’m not going where you think I’m going,_ Nico wrote in the letter.

Will had never let anyone finish the story when they tried to tell him what happened. Will never thought about anything revolving around the accident.

Had Nico _not_ gotten into a street fight that night?

~~~

Nico’s eyes are like locked doors.

When Nico finally gives someone the key, there’s a maze on the other side, Will knows. Will ran around that maze, getting lost, reaching dead ends, for _five years._ He still hadn’t found all of the treasures Nico has hidden.

(He doesn’t think he has the strength to navigate it all a second time.)

He looks away.

“You were my doctor at first, weren’t you?”

 _Oh, yeah._ “Um,” Will coughs. “Yes, I was.”

Nico is squished between the open door and the dark stone wall of his father’s home, staring at Will, expecting something. Will wonders how he got this far, how he got his finger to ring the bell.

“I was your doctor,” Will continues. “But I was also something else.”

Nico’s eyebrows squish together at the curve of his nose.

(Will thinks that’s the first place Nico will get wrinkles. The top of his nose between his eyebrows, where the skin crinkles all the time as Nico makes that confused, doubtful expression. He used to tease Nico about it.

“I bet you’ll beat me,” Will said, once.

“That’s a given,” Nico replied, smirking. “Just look at me. Sharp.” He swung his arm in front of him like he was karate chopping a plank of wood. “Smart.” He leaned forward, pulled at one of Will’s curls, brushed his soft nose against Will’s. Will closed his eyes. “Quick.” He lunged forward and tackled Will to the floor, straddling his chest. “And strong.”

“Ha, ha, ha.” Will folded his arms over his chest.

“So, what am I beating you at?” Nico asked, standing up and pulling Will up.

Will smirked. “If you really want to beat me that badly _, go ahead._ ”

Nico squinted. It made the top of his nose crinkle again.  

“I was referring to who’d get wrinkles first,” Will said.

Nico whacked his arm. “I will not get wrinkles first! You’re older than me.”

Will touched the crease between Nico’s eyebrows. “But I don’t get as worked up as you.”

Nico straightened his eyebrows. “What about you, mister owl face.” He touched Will’s forehead.

“C’mon, I don’t _always_ have my eyebrows raised.”

“I think it’s your default expression.”)

Nico sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re not the only one I don’t remember.”

Will looks to the floor.

“You were my doctor, I remember,” he says. “What else were we, friends?” He looks at Will and sighs. “Or was it you? You were my _partner?”_

Will inhales sharply. “Let’s go sit inside, okay?”

Nico opens the door fully to let him in and leads him to the family room. (Will never found it to be much of a family friendly room.)

He remembers Piper’s advice.

“Act like you did five years ago,” she said. “Obviously that worked." She leaned forward, signalling that this was important, that he ought to listen. "To him you’re strangers, and I know this is hard, but you have to be a stranger if you don’t want to freak him out.”

 _A stranger. You’re a stranger,_ Will tells himself.

Will went to see Piper after he found the note. All Piper and all of the others knew about Nico’s injuries was that he got dropped off at the hospital in the middle of the night, unconscious, by some anonymous person that found him on the street.

Nico gestures to the sofa. Will sits awkwardly.

(The last time he was here was before Nico moved in with him. Nico invited him over when his father was away on business for the weekend and they ended up making out on this couch until both of them got a little _too_ excited and decided to watch the Matrix movies. That was three years ago.)

Nico sits at the other end. “So, what’s up?”

“Well, um.” Will sort of rushed over here without thinking it through. “I guess I came to talk?”

“I do go see a therapist for that, you know.”

Will cringes. “Maybe it’s more for me than you,” he mumbles.

(The last time they talked, aside from that day in the hospital when Nico first got out of the coma, was the night before the accident. They had a fight. It was stupid, really. Silly.

Will just got out of medical school and started working at the hospital. Nico was in his third year of University. Will often worked at night. Nico was always studying on the weekends. They’d been living together for a year. They didn’t see each other enough.

“I feel like I’m just being left behind all over again,” Nico said.

They ended up yelling.

“I’m too tired to come home to this, Nico.” Will said after awhile.

Nico laughed humorlessly. “You’re too fucking tired for me, Will. You make me feel like a waste of your energy.”

“You make me feel like I’m never enough, that’s why! You’re always dancing around like you want a pity party.” Will felt like he didn’t have a proper grasp on his mouth, he was too tired to stop it from spitting anything out.

“I don’t want your pity, I don’t fucking need it. I’m doing great at school, splendid!” Nico threw his arms in the air.

“And I don’t doubt that. But listen to the way you say it,” Will said, his voice lower, drained.

He knew Nico didn’t complain much, that he did it as a joke. Grumpiness was easier, for him.

“I-” Nico was crying, slightly.

“Let’s go to sleep.”)

Nico seems very uncomfortable with the silence, shifting in his seat. He gets up. “I’ll get us some water.”

Will nods.

When Nico returns and passes him a cold glass, he’s thankful for the distraction. He spins the water in the cup and ice cubes clang against the sides of the glass.

Before Nico can ask anything about him, Will asks, “How have you been?”

Nico raises his eyebrows. “Great!”

Will rubs his forehead, not sure how much longer he can do this.

“Okay,” Nico adds, lighter. “I guess.”

Will nods. “Dizzy spells still?”

“Not really,” he answers. “Haven’t had a dizzy spell in a couple of months. Migraines, though, I’m starting to forget what life is like without them.”

Will frowns. (He forgot a lot more than life without migraines.)

“That seems to be the trend, though, doesn’t it?” Nico asks. “Forgetfulness.”

The water is cold in Will’s hands. (Nico’s voice is cold to his ears. Nico’s eyes are freezing to his eyes.)

“Look, Nico,” Will says. “This sucks. There is actually no way that this could ever _not_ suck.”

Nico laughs dryly. “Reality’s harsh-” he pauses. “Uh, what’s your name?” Nico looks up as if he can’t believe it. “I don’t even remember your fucking name.”

“Will, my name’s Will Solace.” He rubs a hand through his curls and resigns himself. “Nice to meet you.”

“Right,” Nico says. “I’m Nico di Angelo. Shall we shake hands?”

“That’s what strangers do next, right?” Will gets up. “It’s all about natural progressions.”

(Ha. Noting could ever feel natural about this. Will supposes stepping out of his comfort zone is really the only way.)

Nico opens his mouth a little, and looks at him, taking him in. Will puts out his hand. Nico looks down at it, and reaches to shake it like he’s in a slow motion movie, keeping a doubtful expression the whole time.

Will smiles. “Next step, small talk.”

Nico’s head jerks forward, confused. “Seriously?”

“What’s your favorite colour?”

Will knows. Purple, like the sky just after the sun has set and just before the stars appear.

“Uh… black?” Nico says.

(He’s gone. He’s _gone_.)

“Um. Okay.” Wil takes a sip of water, forcing himself to be normal. “Cool, black’s a great colour, aside from the fact that it’s not technically a colour.”

“So tired of hearing that. Maybe that’s _why_ it’s my favorite.”

Will nods his head like he’s impressed. “So you’re a rebel, huh?”

“Rebel against memory, too,” he mutters. Then more loudly, “What’s _your_ favorite colour?”

“I can’t just choose one, honestly.” Will says. “Light blue, orange, forest green, pink, they’re all great.”

Nico raises his eyebrows.

Will continues, “What about books, movies, music?”

“Books? The classics. I can’t really read well recently, tough,” Nico says, leaning forward to rest his head on his hand.

(He has such a _Nico_ expression on.)

“Movies?” Nico continues. “All of them. Horror’s that are actually scary and not stupid. The classic Sci-Fi’s. Comedy’s that somehow manage to _actually_ make me laugh.”

(Will knows Nico also likes romance movies, or has the potential to. Will owns too many and they spent too much time together.)

(Before they both got too busy.)

Will nods.

“And, as for music. I’m kind of old-fashioned. Classic rock, mostly,” Nico says. “And I’m going to pretend you don’t already know all of that.”

(Will did know all of that. Once. But Nico had… _evolved_ in five years.)

Nico makes this face, this adorable face. His eyebrows furrow and his mouth pushes upwards in a sort of contemplative pout.

(It’s so hard not to do the little things Will did before. It’s so hard not to lean forward and kiss the crease between his eyebrows.)

“I guess it’s my turn?” Will says, quickly. “Though my answers are definitely going to be more embarrassing.”

Nico raises his eyebrows.

(He keeps doing that. He didn’t used to raise his eyebrows so much. Will was the one who always raised his eyebrows.)

“Okay, so books. I love them all, especially adventures, mysteries, and romances, but I haven’t read anything other than a textbook in years.”

“Right. Med School.”

Will nods. “As for movies, I like actual plot. I guess I mostly like romance and comedy and light-hearted movies, but…”

Nico had gotten him to watch all of his favorites and Will loves those too, now.

“But..?” Nico asks.

“I recently started trying other genres and I like them too,” Will explains. (Vaguely.) “And I like mainstream music. But classic rock is cool, too.”

Nico nods, stares at his water.

Will feels like he’s got to drag this conversation further. (He succeeded once, he reminds himself.)

“What about school or work?” Will asks.

“Huh,” Nico says, like it’s absolutely ridiculous. “Apparently I’m a third year literature student. I didn’t even plan to go to university, for fucks sake.”

Will jerked back, shocked for a moment. (Nico loved writing, Nico loved his program at University.)

Will doesn’t know _how_ to act as if this is all normal and even remotely _okay._ “Um-”

Nico cuts him off. “I mean; I was perfectly happy working at the corner store, and I give exactly zero fucks about writing.”

Will looks at him. “So, you were happy getting beat up every other day. You were happy practicing fighting in your bedroom every night until you passed out. You were happy making your life’s income selling people cigarettes during the day and betting on bar fights at night.” Will looks to the ceiling. “Yeah, sure, I get it. You were _so much happier before_.”

Nico pushes himself all the way back in his seat, as if he’s repulsed by the words coming out of Will’s mouth.

Will shoots out of his seat. “I need the washroom,” he says as he walks away, knowing exactly where it is, where everything is in this mansion of a house.

In the bathroom he splashes water on his face and stares at himself in the mirror. He has this foreign feeling inside, that he doesn’t recognise himself. It’s nauseating.

He shakes his head. _Don’t have expectations for him,_ he tells himself in his head. _You’re starting over, not continuing from where you left off._

Then he wacks his head with the palm of his hand a few times, muttering, “Idiot, idiot, idiot,” and goes back out to see Nico.

When he sees Nico sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, his chest feels like it’s trapped in a too-tight cage.

He clears his throat. “I think I should get going now…”

Nico looks up at him and his eyes are watery. Will looks away and walks to the door, telling himself to pretend everything went smoothly.

He hears Nico get up and follow him.

Nico lets him out at the door, barely looking at him, and Will panics. (Is this it?)

“You’re a cool guy, Nico,” Will says. He mentally slaps himself. (He sounds so robotic. He has exactly zero idea how to act normal about this.)

“Sure,” Nico says. “And I guess this is where you give me your number, but I’m pretty sure I already have it.”

“Um…” Will wonders if Nico’s looked through all of their texts.

“You happen to be ‘Sunshine’?” Nico shows him his phone. There’s a picture of Will in bed at his apartment with a ridiculous bedhead and closed eyes and an insanely gigantic smile.

“Oh, um.” Will looks above Nico’s head. “Yeah, that’s me. I have a new phone, though. Same number.”

(And _thank god._ If he had to text Nico now with all of their old texts there, he couldn’t do it. He didn’t add Nico’s number to his new phone when he got it.)

“I guess I’ll text you, then,” Nico says.

Will nods, numbly.

Nico rubs both of his hands on his forehead and takes a deep breath. “So we were dating? We were living together?”

“Yeah…” Will’s voice is small and scratchy.

“Why haven’t you come to see me, then?” Nico asks, his voice high. “Was I that disposable to you?”

Will jerks backwards like he’s been slapped. “What? No-” his voice breaks. He turns around. “I just, I couldn’t see you. That hurt too much.”

“Well I’m sorry I’m so painful to look at,” Nico says coldly. “You know; I have no idea what happened to make me lose everything. It’s not _my_ fault.”

Will walks down the steps of the front balcony. He needs to breathe. “Let’s talk another time, okay?”

He turns around and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyooo  
> Update, update! On time, too!  
> I hope you all had a good week and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! If so, let me know!  
> (They will be happy eventually I promise.)


	5. Chapter 5

_Nico texts_

Will texts

 

~~~

 

It takes Nico a week to text him.

_It’s Nico_

_Sorry, I was busy._

Will adds him as a contact. (Nico used to be ‘Death Boy’. Now he’s just Nico.)

Will suspects Nico would never have texted him. Piper must have interfered.

It’s ok. Life’s busy. 

I’m sorry, too. I lost my cool for a bit.

_No problem. I was an ass_

*Nods* Oh, wait. Maybe I shouldn’t agree to that.

_So funny._

Thank you, thank you *bows*

_Piper want me to ask you out to dinner_

_She says you’re an idiot btw_

*gasps* I’ve been betrayed my apprentice!

So, dinner? 

Like a date?

_“To talk to each other civilly like the civilized men we are”_

Sounds like her, alright.

_And what’s with all the role playing *rolls eyes*_

*puts hand on hip* how’re you supposed to know what I really mean without hearing the tone in my voice/what I’m doing while I say it??? 

_Yeah, yeah. (Defeats the purpose of texting though…)_

…Shush.

And okay I'm up. For our "civil conversation"

_Okay. Um. Friday?_

I guess Piper wouldn’t mind if I skipped one therapy session. Friday’ll do. 

_Okay. Um. Let’s just go to a café okay? Like, Olympus, maybe?_

Perf. I’m off at 7 this Friday. 

_Um, so… wanna meet at 8:30?_

I’ll be there.

Will puts down his phone and shakes his hands.

It’s sort of easier to talk to him by text, but it also feels wrong, like he’s cheating, almost. He feels like he’s getting to know someone new when he never stopped loving the last person he was with. (Except they both look the same.)

It’s like starting a new braid with new strings and leaving the other one hanging and unfinished.

He asks Lou and Cecil to come over before his “dinner date.”

(He’s going to freak out. Why is he even doing this?)

Why fight for someone that’s already gone?

Will clenches his fists. He has to _stop_ thinking like this. He has to stop expecting Nico to revert back to how he was. He has to stop thinking Nico will just _change_.

Hell, maybe he’s the one who has to change.

~~~

Nico looks uncomfortable. Will is uncomfortable. This whole thing is uncomfortable.

And Will hasn’t been so worried about his hair since before Nico moved in with him. Lou and Cecil barged into his apartment at 7:30 that evening, startling Will out of his end-of-the-week nap.

They didn’t even bother to knock, unlocking the door with their key (why did Will give them a key?) and whipping the door open, yelling, “It’s Showtime!”

Will has never been the most put-together guy. Lou says his hair is usually such a mess at work, if she didn’t know him and he was going to give her surgery, she’d run and pray to the gods. (Good thing Will isn’t a surgeon. He doesn’t think he has the energy to tame his wavy yarn-like hair every day.)

Maybe he shouldn’t have asked Lou and Cecil to come over this evening, they go over the top and all the way to the sky for everything.

Will thinks this date _thingy_ is more important to them than it is to Will. Even Piper fussed a lot about it.

“Don’t be domestic,” she said. “Don’t be the pesky boyfriend you were after 5 years with him.”

“I was not pesky!” Will said.

She waved her hand as if saying, _whatever you say_. “And most importantly, _don’t have expectations_.” She said those last three words slowly, dragging them out and pulling apart each syllable.

“Yeah, I know. He’s not the same person he used to be,” Will said.

“Stop saying that, Will,” she said, leaning forward and looking at him determinedly. “He’s not a stranger, and he certainly hasn’t been transformed into another human being.” She looked directly into Will’s eyes. “Five years of experiences means a serious amount of change, yeah. But you met him and fell in love with him before all of that.”

“I _know_ that.” Will sighed, and it sounded broken. “I know that.”

“Then why are you acting like you wouldn’t fall in love with him if you met him now instead of 5 years ago?” she asked. (Piper rarely pushed him like that. It made him feel out of control, barely keeping his balance on the edge of a cliff.)

“I-” _Why?_

Why did he fall in love with Nico?

Falling in love with Nico was like taking a slow, long sip of sweet tea. It was hot at first, and left him startled with a burnt tongue, but then it slowly cooled to the perfect temperature, warm and comforting and peaceful.

Nico was an enigma, the boy he’d found bloody and battered on the streets. Nico was quiet and shielded, but also sharp and sarcastic and witty and open, and Will loved when those sides peaked through like the sun shinning through the gaps between houses in the morning.

Will loved Nico because, on their first date almost a year after they met, they went ice skating. When Will asked Nico if he wanted to go skating with Will, they were at Olympus café, which had become their meet-up place after Nico’s last check-up appointment. (Nico had suggested it. Nico was in love with their vanilla hot chocolate. Nico later told Will it was because Bianca used to add vanilla extract when she made hot chocolate because they were both obsessed with it.)

“Do you skate?” Will asked.

“Yeah, I can skate,” Nico said. “And I’m looking forward to our… date?”

Their first date. (It was cliché and Will swore the sky was cloudless, there were so many stars.) And it turned out Nico had only gone skating once before and he had absolutely no idea what to do. “I though it would be easy!” Nico exclaimed. He ended up holding onto Will the whole time and Will didn’t mind at all.

Nico was dorky and adorable.

Nico _is_ all of those things, but Will misses the new things he became. Will misses how easily Nico showed him those things.

Will keeps looking away from Nico, pretending to survey the café as his hands went to his too-perfect curls, unused to the feeling and worried they’re messed up. (All his fretting is probably the cause for his hair getting messy again. But whatever.)

Whenever he looks back towards Nico, he finds him staring at Will intently, as if Nico’s trying to figure something out. (Will thinks he’s trying to figure out why he ever bothered with Will before. Will doesn’t have an answer for him.)

Will catches Nico’s eyes and Nico keeps staring with no intention of discreteness. He won’t look away, and Will fidgets in his seat.

“H-how’s your... father?” Will asks, desperate to break the silence and the staring.

“My father?” Nico asks, incredulous.

“Uh… yeah?”

“My father’s fine,” Nico says and then whispers, “thanks for asking about me.”

“Really, Nico?” Will asks, sighing.

(Why is Will so irritable these days?)

Nico looks away.

“How have you been, Nico?” Will asks.

“I’ve been fine.”

“Have you still been going to The Pankration?”

“Are you kidding?” Nico says. “I can’t even do five jumping jacks without getting a severe migraine.”

“What are you doing, then?” Will asks. “You know, to… cope.”

“I don’t think I am coping.” He sighs. “Piper’s trying to get me to write. I’m supposed to write in a journal every night.”

“That’s great,” Will says.

“My heart’s just not in it, though. The words just don’t come.”

“Oh…” It’s not like words always came naturally to him, to anyone. “They didn’t before, either.”

“Why did I write, then? I don’t get it.”

“When you started writing, you stopped going to bar fights, but you didn’t stop fighting,” Will explains.

“That makes so much sense it baffles me.”

“Let me get to the point.” Will breathes in, loudly. “You wanted to find a healthy way to keep fighting through life and its huge pile of crap. When we cleaned out your bedroom and packed up your stuff to-”

Is it weird to talk about them moving in together? Should he pretend their history together doesn’t exist?

Nico continues for him. “To move in to your apartment, okay. _And?”_

Okay, then. “We looked through Bianca’s stuff too, to see if there was anything you wanted to bring along.”

“I haven’t-” Nico gives him a look, like a deer in headlights. “I haven’t looked through her stuff _ever.”_

“I know. But you were ready, you _wanted_ to,” Will says. “And we found her “diary” but it was more of a poetry book, and it was beautiful and brilliant and-”

“Bianca wrote _poetry_?”

“Yeah, and you read it all, every night.” Will smiles. “And I found this mini journal at Barnes and Noble that looked like her diary’s twin and bought it for you, and...”

“And I wrote.”

“Simply put, yeah.”

Nico nods.

They’re silent for awhile, and then Nico whispers, “I’m trying," while looking down at his cup of hot chocolate like he wants to swim in it. (And burn.)

He's trying.

And then Will’s smiling, _really_ smiling, and when Nico looks up and sees Will's smile, he looks like he’s actually being burned.

They're caught like that for a moment, caught in each other; Will wide-eyed and smiling ( _god_ , smiling), and Nico even more wide-eyed and open-mouthed. (And _trying, he's trying.)_

Will’s cheeks have somehow unleashed themselves from his control, and as Nico watches him his lips slowly start to curl up as well, which makes Will start laughing, because now Nico’s trying _and_ _smiling_ , and why does this make Will so overwhelmingly happy?

“I’m trying, too,” Will says, slightly out of breath and slightly hysterical. ( _God,_ this past year has just been too much for him. He’s losing his sanity.)

Nico nods, still startled but also still smiling. (And trying.)

Will continues, “And fuck, is it ever tiring.”

Nico’s frozen, and Will’s the exact opposite of frozen, he feels like he’s melting. He feels like Nico’s hot chocolate; hot and burning, except he’s spilling over the rim of the cup because there’s too much, way too much to contain at this point.

“I’ve got a fucking routine written out for me and I feel like a robot programmed to do whatever will keep me together for the day. Fucking get up in the morning and _make sure_ not to press the snooze button on my phone or else I’ll never get out of bed. And isn’t spending the day in bed just splendid? And then I’ve got to hop in the shower and make sure not to spend more then five minutes in there or else I’ll end up crying as hard as the water batting down on my skin and then I’ll miss work and _no_ , I can’t risk losing my job after a million years working for it. And, like, fucking _why?”_

And now Nico’s looking at him like he was looking at his hot chocolate earlier, like he’s swimming in Will’s words and they burn.

“And I’ve got a journal beside my bed because writing down my thoughts before going to bed is supposed to help tuck my worries away in a drawer for the night so I can _actually_ sleep, but all I ever write down is ‘I don’t know what the fuck I feel’ or something like that.”

Nico’s got his hand covering his mouth, like he doesn’t know if he should smirk or not. (And he should, he really should, because Will’s a laughable idiot and someone should really just laugh at him already instead of looking at him like he’s broken and too delicate to be laughed at.)

Nico pulls his hand away from his mouth and says, “That’s pretty counterproductive.”

And Will laughs, because he’s an idiot and everything about his life is counterproductive these days. “You were always better with words,” he says.

“Well, I can see that now. At least I can do better than ‘ _I don’t know what the fuck I’m feeling_.'”

Will smiles. “You definitely can.”

“Thanks,” Nico mumbles, finally taking the first sip of his hot chocolate.

“I’m happy you’re trying,” Will says, and picks up his coffee, which has cooled down to the right warmth.

Falling in love with Nico felt like taking a slow sip from a sweat cup of tea.

Being with Nico feels different now. More like sipping coffee and waking up, brain wired.

~~~

Will practically runs to Piper’s apartment.

He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Happy? Sad?

He feels like doing a cartwheel. He feels stupid.

(He never in his life succeeded in doing a cartwheel without damaging something, his body parts or someone else’s.)

He feels like pouring out a waterfall, or a rainstorm.

He’s a wreck, a battleship stuck in his own storm and he’s sinking.

He almost trips on his way up the concrete steps of Piper’s apartment. They live in a fourplex on a mini side-street of New York, which has brown bricks and symmetric rows of white-rimmed windows.

He’s shaking all over, vibrating; an elastic band that was stretched to its limit and now that all the tension has been released, he feels loose and unsteady.

He knocks quickly. _What is with him?_

Piper opens the door. Will remembers she’s having some of the gang over for tea tonight, and he feels as if he’s heading to an interrogation room.

She’s wearing baggy grey sweatpants, a forest green tank top, and a beige, fuzzy, teddy-bear-like sweater. It doesn’t match at all but looks so cozy and warm and familiar that when she hugs him, he feels like he’s come home. He lets go, lets his muscles loosen, and slumps into her. She whispers repetitively beside his ear, “I’m so proud of you for doing this, Will.” Soothing, steady, secure. “You did it. You took a huge step forward.”

It’s not until he hears people approaching them and he opens his eyes that he realizes tears are streaming down his face. Hazel’s hand is blurry as it reaches up to wipe the tears from his cheeks, and he can barely make out Frank, Percy, Annabeth, and Jason standing behind her.

“It didn’t go well?” Percy asks.

Piper lets Will out of her embrace, turning around to face the group.

“I don’t know,” Will says, his voice scratchy. “I have zero fucking clue.”

“Well, shit,” Percy says. “You’ve got it just as bad as Leo’s test runs.” And then Annabeth looks over at him like he’s the biggest hassle-child she’s ever had to babysit, and Jason is muttering something along the lines of ‘that time Leo made liquid nitrogen ice cream and I got frost bite on my tongue’ and Frank is looking at him with immense horror and Hazel’s hand is ticklish on Will’s cheek and Piper is smiling at him from his side, and he can’t help it- he bursts out laughing. Real, release-all-the-nerves laughing.

Crying, and laughing, and crying, and it feels _so good._ (What even is the _difference_ between crying and laughing? He can’t tell anymore. They hurt his stomach, stretch his mouth until it’s sore and twitching, and take reign of his entire body. They feel like therapy.)

Everyone freezes to look at him, and then Piper giggles and Percy joins in and all the rest are passing incredulous looks around.

“Nico wiped my coffee moustache,” Will blurts. “He just leaned over, wiped my mouth, and said he prefers me un-bearded.”

And then they’re all laughing, until Piper says, “Let’s all go sit down in the living room, okay? I’ll make tea.”

Will nods, saying, “I’ll help,” and follows her into the kitchen.

She starts boiling the water, and then turns to look at him. To assess him.

“I really don’t know,” he says. “How it went. I’m so confused.”

“Well, yeah, you are,” she says. “A freaking insane amount of things happened in a short period of time.”

 _Fucking exactly._ He nods.

She smiles. “Your hair’s a mess, that’s the first thing I’m certain of.

His hand flies to his hair as it did too many times that evening. “I was nervous…”

She leans forward and pulls at the curl on the top right side of his head, the one that’s always stubbornly curlier than the rest. “And that’s exactly why the whole thing is a mess of confusion to you. Nerves are like are barriers, and they block you from seeing things clearly.”

They make him feel like he’s always too late; a lap behind in the marathon of his life.

“What _do_ you remember?” Piper asks.

“Honestly,” he says, looking to the brown light fixture hanging over the sink in the kitchen. “There are some snippets that I remember so vividly, but there are a bunch of blank spots in between.”

“Well, lets make a list.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? I missed a Friday?  
> Time flies, they say. Time leaps, I say.  
> So yeah, the last two weeks feel like they didn't even happen, they were so crazy, and at one point I lost a part of this chapter and that sucked, but I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. (I think.) The next two weeks are my last weeks before my march break and they are filled with exams and assignments, and I haven't even started writing the next chapter, so don't expect it for a few weeks. (Sorry!)  
> I'd really love to hear from you guys about this chapter, I feel like it's a pretty big one. (I mean, they're talking, whaaaat???) What do you think of their interactions? Of how Will's feelings are developing?  
> How are you guys doing? Are you guys crazy busy with life like me?  
> Aaaaand see you soon! (hopefully maybe)


	6. Chapter 6

“What in the world are you worrying about Will? Sounds to me like it couldn’t have possibly gone better.”

He’d just finished spilling out everything he could remember about the night.

“I-I don’t know. I just feel so nervous, so on edge.”

“Will,” Piper says sternly. “Look at me.”

He pulls his head out of his hands, blinking at the bright lights of the kitchen.

“Now count to ten. Draw each number in your mind.”

He takes a deep breath and pictures the numbers in his mind.

Piper asks him to do this whenever he gets really anxious. He always pictures himself on a beach, drawing the numbers in the hot sand. He imagines the scratchy feel of the sand beneath his fingertips, the smell of the salty sea, the sound of the waves crashing, and slowly draws each number in his mind.

His breathing slows down by the time he gets to 10.

“Want to go out and see the others? They’re probably wondering why it’s taken us 20 minutes to make tea.”

“Oh, right.” He laughs, and looks behind him. “I forgot to turn on the kettle.”

~~~

He’s driving home when it hits him.

He has spent more than a year of his life – a _year –_ being upset (he can’t afford to lose a year of his life at this point, he’s already 20; soon enough the 2 is going to blur into a 3 and then a 4 and then a 5 and then he’ll be at the point where death starts doing more seeking and less hiding in it’s twisted game and – oh _geez_ ). He spent a year depressed, and in the true meaning of the word – the Merriam Webster dictionary definition – not the one that’s thrown around on the streets.

He was depressed and he never acknowledged it. He avoided saying it, hearing it, thinking it; and he really should be smarter than that, he really should have known that not looking at the truth doesn’t mean it’s not there, sitting at the lonely table in the back corner.

He was depressed, buried deep in cold earth.

He has barely dug his way out. (Has he even glimpsed the outside world yet?)

He needs to say it to himself in front of the mirror, shout it to the world, show the world he’s not afraid of the truth. Show _himself_ he’s not afraid.

He mouths it, now, riding in his Volkswagen on the 20 East. Stretches it in his mouth, stretches his mouth with it, lets his mouth muscles adapt to the foreign movements. _Depressed._

Then, out loud, he says, “I’ve built myself a castle of crap. Fucking donkey crap. And it fucking stinks.”

And that’s exactly what he’s done, really. He’s built his own depression, he’s avoided it, and when it crowded the room too much, when it blocked his path, when it couldn’t be avoided any longer, he blamed. He blamed and he blamed and he blamed. He blamed everyone and everything. Except himself.

He blamed Nico and whoever beat Nico up that night (if anyone even beat him up – what the fuck happened that night?) and he blamed Nico’s amnesia.

_It’s not their fault._

It’s his fault, all his fault.

No.

Piper’s voice comes to him loud and clear. “Fault is fake. Don’t dwell on this preposterous _fault_ business.”

“Fault is the natural response to conflict. And rightly so,” he replied to her, weeks ago.

“Not rightly so. It has no right to any such position. The most honorable position it can ever reach is the trash can.”

“What do you do when you can’t find the remote? You ask, _who moved the remote?_ What do you do when you failed an exam you were confident about, you think, _this teacher’s got squirrel brains._ You ask, _where are_ her _mistakes?_ That is fault, in all of its beauty.”

“But it’s not beautiful, and it’s not a _natural_ response. It, like all of our manners, was taught to us.” Will was lying on her comfy couch as she said this, looking at the ceiling. “Yeah, we live in a causal universe,” she said, leaning over so Will would look at her. “Things don’t just happen. Events and causality are the most fundamental aspects of our universe. So yeah, it’s natural to associate an event with a cause, but it’s not good to blame those causes. It’s not healthy to channel all of these negative emotions into the cause of an event that’s already happened.” She looked him in the eyes. “And half the time fault is wrongly assigned!”

Will was fixating on a brown smudge on their otherwise white ceiling. He’d asked Piper about it during their second meet-up (meet-up is a wonderful euphemism for therapy session), when he was lying in this exact position, trying to distract himself from the tears speeding up to the surface as if on an upwards waterslide. She’d said it was a spider she killed their first week in the apartment “while Jason was too busy squealing like a teenaged girl.”

Piper continued, “It’s good to find the cause for things, to be well-acquainted with causes, to understand them. That’s pretty much the foundation behind ‘ _Don’t let history repeat itself.’_ But if you’re too damn busy blaming them, hating them, then I bet you’re not going to be able to prevent them next time.”

Will threw a pillow at her, then, and said, “Well, I blame you for making me worry about my unhealthy blaming habits.”

She laughed, and he laughed, and he stopped thinking.

He takes a deep breath and tries to peel away his thoughts, to detach from the mess.

After the accident, Piper wouldn’t allow him to drive. (No one else would allow him either, but she was the first one to take initiative and start setting boundaries for him. She was one of the first ones to notice how bad his mind state really was.)

He was distracted and his emotions were sporadic. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He shoved all of his health knowledge to the back of his mind when he should have been pulling it forward and helping himself.

He was introduced to insomnia. (Not that he’d never had insomnia before, he’d been up all night many times with equations and theories spinning in his head after studying too late. But this was the dark side of insomnia, and it was much more torturous. It wasn’t just an after effect of being part of the college community. It wasn’t something that can be solved with a cup of coffee in the morning to clear his mind.)

When he drives now, he forces himself to detach, forces himself to focus on the road, even though staring at empty streets or being stuck in traffic tempts his mind to wander.

Soon enough he’s pulling into his driveway and within minutes he’s collapsed on his sofa.

Today was _insane._

He lasted through an entire dinner with Nico, holding up shaky conversation. (Not shaky enough to shatter but not stable enough for Will to feel calm and accomplished.)

He became well acquainted with the art of writing lists.

His life has always been hectic. He grew up in a large family – he has 5 siblings – with no father to help handle the children or the income or the household chores. And then he submerged himself in years of studying and then the crazy career of a doctor, and now this.

How can he sort his life out when he can’t even sort out his mind?

He pulls his list out of his back pocket and reads it over and over.

 _The good things,_ it says, in Piper’s handwriting.

 _1)_ _Nico said he’s trying. (Whooo!)_

 _2)_ _You’re trying, too._

 _3)_ _Nico wiped your coffee moustache. (Meaning he’s warming up to you, he’s allowing himself to get comfortable and do what he feels to urge to do.)_

 _4)_ _You got some things off your chest and he didn’t mind, he made a sarcastic comment. (!)_

 _5)_ _You managed to finish your drinks without stomping off or strangling each other with jabs. (I’m impressed.)_

 _6)_ _You guys talked about writing. (Next time, offer to help him out. You were the one who helped him with his writing the first time around.)_

 _7)_ _Nico talked about you two sharing an apartment like it was no biggie. (Obviously he’s thought about it and he’s okay with it.)_

 _8)_ _Nico obviously loves your smile._

_9)      And, even if you might not think so, I think he's forgiven you._

~~~

A few days later (when his nerves have settled, his thoughts have stopped running round and round the same way a dog relentlessly chases its tail, and he’s stopped pulling at his curls while chanting “I’m an idiot, I’m such an idiot” like a mantra), Will decides it’s on him to take the next step.

He’s sitting on his bed, holding his cellphone and staring at Nico’s number on the screen. (For a number, it’s pretty menacing.)

Talking to Nico isn’t _that_ difficult anymore, at least not near as difficult as it was weeks ago. He’s afraid to talk to Nico because he’s afraid he’ll mess up. The whole situation seems too fragile; like broken glass they’d just started gluing back together.

His raw emotions make him prone to lashing out impulsively. If he loses Nico now, _really_ loses him, there would be no one to blame but himself. It’ll be because he said something stupid or did something stupid and their whole relationship (or whatever this careful dance around each other is) will just snap.

Nico doesn’t remember anything from their relationship before and therefore he has nothing to fight for. Will’s the only one who can fight for this because he’s the only one who has any ammunition.

He’s the only one who _can_ fight for this. He won’t necessarily be _able_ to fight for this.

He shakes his head and when a sudden impulse takes over his body, he clicks ‘call’, and now it’s ringing and he can’t go back.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Nico.”

“Oh, Will. Hello. What’s up?”

“The ceiling of my apartment,” Will jokes.

“What?”

Will mentally slaps himself. “Oh, never mind. It was a stupid joke. You know, you said what’s _up_? I’m terrible, that one’s been done too many times.”

“Oh, haha.”

“Yeah, I’m _so_ funny!” Will says sarcastically.

 “That could have maybe been funny. In another universe.”

Will laughs. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Uh, sure…”

Will pauses for a few moments, as if he’s preparing for the big revealing, then he smirks and says, “I _am_ living in another universe.”

Nico laughs. “Really? Tell me more!” His voice is playful and Will’s body feels like it’s sizzling.

Will laughs. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but this might give you a brain cramp.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m used to it,” Nico says. “I think I can handle it.”

“Right,” Will says. “Okay, so, I’m from the universe adjacent to this one in the multiverse. When I was 7 years old, the two universes collided. A wormhole opened up between the two, I got caught in it, and then _bam!_ I woke up in a bed with baby blue covers and now I’m living with a family so similar to my own but also different.”

Nico laughs. “Is that even _possible_?”

“Doubting me, Nico?”

“Uh, _yeah_.”

Will laughs. “You’re so blunt.”

“And you’re so silly.”

“Well, thank you. I take pride in my silliness,” Will announces.

“Good,” Nico says.

Will nods, forgetting that Nico can’t see it. (He tends to make gestures even when he’s on the phone. He can’t help it, he’s expressive.) “And by the way, I have, like, _no_ knowledge of theoretical physics and all of that was complete bullshit.”

“Really, Will?” Nico says teasingly. “I didn’t take you for a bullshiter.”

“I’m a world-class bullshiter.”

Nico laughs, and they’re both silent for awhile, trying to gather their thoughts and keep up this blissful light-hearted conversation. It felt so good to talk and tease and joke, and Will was reminded of how much he _missed_ this. He missed it _so much_ and he spent so much time not thinking about it, blocking out all memories of sweet moments such as these, that he was starting to forget they existed. He was starting to forget what it felt like to just _be_ with Nico, without the barrier they have now.

Why had he blocked out something so beautiful?

How did he expect himself to fight for something he’d been forcing himself to forget for months and months?

Suddenly, he feels overwhelmed by all the moments he avoided. He feels like he’s choking on moments.

He thinks of when he’d tickle Nico and Nico would be laughing and gasping beneath him and grabbing at him to try to throw him off. When he’d finally succeed in throwing Will off, he’d say, “I hate you. I hate you so much, Solace.”

And then Will would be laughing, lying on the floor looking up at Nico. “No, you don’t _._ You love me. You love me, you love me, you love me.”

Nico would shove his foot in Will’s face. “You’re delusional,” he’s say, but he’d say it with a laugh in his voice.

Then Will would hop up, about to tackle Nico with tickles again but this time Nico would be prepared – he’d grab Will’s arms and flip them over on the couch, saying, “Not so fast, there, buddy. I haven’t gotten my revenge yet.”

“Oh-ho, and how will you do that? I’m not ticklish,” Will would say, proud of his not-ticklish genes.

Then Nico would pounce, sucking his neck, biting his shoulder, dragging his fingers over Will’s stomach, saying, “I’ve got better powers than tickling.”

Will would only gasp and moan, and think that _yes,_ Nico’s hands had so much power over him (and he didn’t even care). He’d barely have time to dread how much Nico would torture him with teasing before he couldn’t think about anything.

“Um…” Nico whispers suddenly into the silence, startling Will out of his thoughts. “What did you call me about?”

Nico’s voice doesn’t sound as light and free as it had moments before. It sounds as if he’d been doing just as Will had, running around in his own thoughts and remembering the heavy barrier hanging between them. He sounds wary, as if he doesn’t want to let himself slip again, and strained, as if he realises how easy it is to let himself slip and he isn’t sure why he’s fighting against it anymore.

Suddenly, Will wonders what Nico’s impression of him is.

He thinks back to their encounters and starts to realise he gave Nico absolutely no reason to trust him.

He wasn’t acting at all like he had when they first met 6 years ago. When he’d first met Nico, he knew Nico was someone he didn’t want to lose and he tried his hardest to keep Nico in his life. Will was careful and shy and sweet and he opened himself up slowly. He considered Nico’s feelings, and then Nico slowly opened himself up as well.

“Will?” Nico asks.

“Oh, yeah, I’m here.”

“So, what did you want to talk about?”

“Right, yes. I called to ask if you want to go see a movie with me Saturday night.”

“Um… like, at the theatre?” Nico asks.

“Yeah,” Will says. “There are quite a few good ones out. We could go see Deadpool. Or whatever.”

“I don’t know…” Nico says. “I haven’t been to the theatre since… you know. I’m not really sure if…”

“Oh! Oh, yeah. I’m so sorry, I didn’t think of that. I’m so stupid sometimes.”

“No, don’t worry. I don’t expect you to think your plans through that deeply. And I don’t exactly let it show, how bad it is…”

Will feels like something’s gripping his heart. Nico’s hurting, Nico’s struggling, and Will’s been blindly moping around and ignoring him and lashing out at him and not being there for him.

He has an urge to change that. A powerful, deep-rooted, _need_ to change that, to fix all the mistakes he’s made in that last year. (The need is coursing through his body like electricity.)

“Hey, we could still watch a movie at my apartment if you want!”

“At your apartment?”

“Yeah, I have, like, a million movies here. Of every genre.”

“Oh, well I guess that sounds alright.”

“Yay!”

“You really are a child, Will.”

Will notices that Nico calls him by his first name a lot more than he did when they met 6 years ago, when he’d stubbornly call him “Solace”.

Suddenly a smile is stretching itself across his face and he starts singing, “ _Forever young, I want to be forever young_.”

“Okay, okay, point taken.” Nico laughs.

Will laughs along and says, “So, can I pick you up at 6?”

“Sounds good,” Nico says. “Should I eat before?”

“Nah, we’ll order pizza.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, hello, my friends!  
> Here I am and with an update, yay!  
> I love you guys and I’m so terribly sorry I take so long to update sometimes. And I’m sorry to say it’ll probably be awhile before the next chapter, because life absolutely refuses to slow down.  
> I’m honestly so overwhelmed by my second semester of college, my classes are crazy!  
> Anyway, I get so caught up in school and I hate that, and for some reason I’ve been able to forget about school for a few hours every here and there and write, and it feels so nice. I’m really happy this week, I don’t even know why!  
> I wrote this chapter really fast so I could post it tonight so I’m sorry if it’s full of typos and mistakes!  
> And lastly, what do you guys think of the chapter?  
> What do you think about the progress Will’s making? About how Nico’s warming up to Will and finding it hard to be guarded around him? About all the dialogue?  
> Gosh, I always use to say dialogue was my weak point, and I would avoid it at all costs, and I’m trying to challenge myself with this story and I think it might be turning out alright? I hope so at least!  
> Are all of your lives crazy, too? Tell me about them!  
> …  
> Love ya!! :D Have a great day/night and don’t forget to smile!


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